Doctor Strange 2 Writer Debunks the Internet's Favorite MCU Complaint
Doctor Strange 2 writer Michael Waldron has shut down claims he ignored WandaVision, using a Reddit AMA to explain how the Disney+ series directly informed Wanda’s arc in Multiverse of Madness.
For everyone who has spent the last couple years insisting the Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness writer didn’t watch WandaVision: he finally answered that, and he didn’t tiptoe around it.
What Michael Waldron actually said
During a recent Reddit AMA, writer Michael Waldron was asked what guided his take on Wanda in Doctor Strange 2. He laid out his character focus and slid in a pointed aside to the skeptics.
"I liked continuing to explore Strange's need for control, especially in the wake of his experience in Infinity War/Endgame," Waldron wrote. "And this mirrored Wanda's own struggle with control following WandaVision (which, contrary to what the internet tells you, I was reading/watching all the way through)."
Why this became a thing in the first place
This rumor has had legs since the 2022 movie hit. It picked up steam when Elizabeth Olsen said in 2023 that Waldron hadn’t seen WandaVision while he was writing, because the show wasn’t finished at the time. She also explained that she adjusted how she played Wanda in the film so it wouldn’t just retrace the same emotional arc from the Disney+ series. That context made it easy for people to assume the movie ignored the show.
- Waldron wrote Multiverse of Madness while WandaVision was still rolling out.
- Olsen later said he hadn’t seen the finished series during that writing window and tried to avoid repeating WandaVision beats in her performance.
- Fans used that to argue the movie contradicted the show.
- Now, in his AMA, Waldron says he was following WandaVision as it released and built Wanda’s and Strange’s arcs around their shared control issues post-Endgame and post-WandaVision.
Where that leaves the debate
At minimum, Waldron’s comment is him putting a flag in the ground: he says he did keep up with WandaVision while crafting the script, and the control theme was the point. Will that satisfy everyone who hated how Wanda is used in the movie? Probably not. But it does clear up the narrative that he wrote the script in a WandaVision-free vacuum, and it offers a small peek at how he was threading character arcs across Marvel Studios projects built on overlapping timelines.